Our Research

The mission of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) is to advance life science research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and to stimulate bio-economic development in the state of Illinois, and we do so by tackling grand challenges in fundamental and applied research with genomics and multi-disciplinary team science. The IGB was originally proposed at the dawn of the genomic era as the embodiment of a goal to centralize biological and biotechnological research at Illinois, a role that it continues to fulfill today. Our members conduct path-breaking genomic research to address societal issues in the areas of food security, energy, health, technology, and environmental conservation. A full list of publications is available on our research profile page.

IGB members are drawn from many schools and departments, including biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, sociology, and business. Faculty and affiliate members remain an integral part of their home departments while also pursuing collaborative projects in thematic research groups at the IGB.

In each research theme, the common goal of a particular grand challenge in research—developing more effective cancer therapeutics, creating more efficient and robust food and fuel crops, uncovering the origins of life—creates synergy among diverse groups of scientists. Our work ranges from basic research that expands the horizons of human knowledge to applied research that builds on this foundational knowledge to create new technologies. Our complement of research themes is dynamic, adapting to new discoveries, methods, and needs. Anyone in our academic community can propose a new theme.

Themes

There are currently eleven research themes at the IGB and two research initiatives:

CompGen Initiative
The CompGen Initiative combines the collective strengths of Illinois’ genomic research with its prowess in large-scale parallel systems and big data to develop new technology enabling genomic breakthroughs. CompGen brings together computer scientists, computer engineers, bioinformaticians and genomic biologists to create new collaborations; so far the initiative has lead to three new large-scale campus projects.

KnowEnG: NIH Center of Excellence in Big Data ComputingKnowEnG (pronounced "knowing") is a National Institutes of Health-funded initiative that brings together researchers from the University of Illinois and Mayo Clinic to create a Center of Excellence in Big Data Computing. It is part of the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative that NIH launched in 2012 to tap the wealth of information contained in biomedical Big Data. KnowEnG is one of 11 Centers of Excellence in Big Data Computing funded by NIH in 2014.

Our research portfolio as a whole spans three broad areas of research: health challenges and solutions, genomic technologies, and environmental resources and conservation. Learn more about how individual research themes connect to these areas by visiting the pages linked below.